Abstract
We present a detailed investigation of light emission phenomena connected with the presence of hot carriers in AlGaAs/GaAs heterojunction bipolar transistors. Electrons heated by the strong electric field at the base-collector junction lead to both impact ionization and light emission. A new general-purpose weighted Monte Carlo procedure has been developed to study such effects. The measured hot electroluminescence is attributed to radiative recombinations within the valence and the conduction bands. Good agreement is found between theory and experiment.